


Diaries

by LittleRaven



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e02 Dead Man's Party, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25521397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: After the bodies have been removed, Buffy returns to her room and takes a moment.
Relationships: Buffy Summers & Kendra Young
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Every Woman 2020





	Diaries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Highsmith (quimtessence)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/gifts).



Barely back and already people were dying. Business as usual. Worse, since usual didn’t involve it happening in her house, robots aside. 

Buffy sat on her bed, turning Mr. Pointy over in her hands. She rubbed her fingers over the smooth curves of the wood, and thought of Kendra, throat slit, lying in her own blood. She thought of herself, choking in a pool only inches deep. Had Kendra felt the same way? Had she tried to breathe as she bled, unable to move, to make even that small thing her body did every day work? 

Kendra had been brave, more committed than Buffy ever had been. If she had wavered, if she had ever had a desire to quit, or felt too much afraid to die at sixteen, she had never shown it—would she have if Buffy had gotten a chance to talk to her again, to slow down and compare lives? Buffy remembered their few exchanges, the poise and surety with which Kendra had first criticized her emotional behavior, and then helped her without judgment or hesitation. Even if Kendra had ever doubted her calling, Buffy was sure she had handled it with more grace. And she had died regardless, more permanently than Buffy. 

She wondered who had been called before her. Who had been picked for the Shirley Jackson lottery then? She had never wanted to know before; the topic had been too morbid. Well, her life was more morbid than anything in a book—another Slayer’s life couldn’t be worse. Buffy felt a sudden kinship for the girl, a flickering of what she’d begun to feel for those few moments between giving Kendra her shirt and closing her eyes on the library floor. Maybe she should find out what her time in the mines had been like. Had she broken the rules, like Buffy had, or kept to them like Kendra? When had she been separated from any hope of a life haunting graveyards? Did anyone remember her? Was her Watcher like Giles, willing to fight even when it was stupid and not his job, or had he maintained his distance? Did he, or she, still think about her, or had that only lasted for as long as it took to fill out the entry in the Watcher’s diary of the day she died? It had only been a couple of years since Buffy fell into being the Slayer. Barely more than a year since she’d drowned. Months since Kendra had died. Not long enough. Buffy didn’t think there could be a long enough. Someone should remember her. 

Someone would. 

Giles would have to know where the diaries were kept. He might even have a copy; these weren’t exactly mass market paperbacks, but Watchers liked to know things. It might even please him if she asked, after all her time away. Show her interest in sticking around to be the Slayer. He’d never complained, unlike the others, but she knew he couldn’t have been happy. Going over the books with him, learning the name of who had died so she could have her strength and die afterwards; Buffy could give him, and the girl, that much. 

She set aside Mr. Pointy, and without thinking, reached into the drawer where her diary resided, for the first time since before her birthday. Buffy stopped, fingers brushing the cover. She pulled her hand back, looked at the stake, and deliberately took the diary out. 

Before she read about anyone else, she had her own writing to do.


End file.
